The Goals and AVG Goals statistics for goalkeepers on player history screen will now tell us the number of goals conceived by the keeper. It will be represented by a negative number (or 0 if the keeper hasn’t conceived any goals in the games he played). The count starts now, so all matches so far won’t be considered.

Better late than never! My new year’s gift is now ready to be used: LOANS!

Managers can now loan list their players or make loan proposals to loan listed players. Loan negotiations may take 3 turns (transfers will behave in a similar way in the future), so even after you’ve made a reasonable proposal it may not be processed next turn. You’ll know the number of turns left in the negotiations screen.

When more than one loan proposal exist for the same player, the following criterias will be used: highest loan wage percentage, longest loan period, “weakest” team (in terms of players average).

You will be able to call a loaned player back or break a loan contract, but in order to do that you must pay the other involved team a certain amount depending on how many turns are left in the loan contract.

The transfers and loans screen can now be filtered to display transfers (default), free transfers, loans or all.

I expect to have left only minor bugs in all these new features, but we never now, there is a lot of code there! Let us know if you see anything strange or have any questions or comments. I hope you enjoy :-)

Added support for field positions without players. An example situation where the manager takes advantage on that is when the manager´s team change. In this case, the field positions are kept with gray icons – so the manager has the possibility to reassign new players to the formation without having to remember what was done for the previous team.

In order to avoid last minute arranged transfers we’ve implemented a new rule to players on transfer list and free transfer. They will only reply the proposals after being free or transfer listed for at least 3 turns. If you make a proposal to a player that has just been transfer listed for instance, you’ll get a reply only after 3 turns, when the negotiations will carry on as usual. Things will remain the same if you make a proposal for a player which has been listed more than 3 turns ago. This 3 turns counter will be reset if the player’s price is changed during negotiations.

Leagues have names now, so instead of simply calling them Division 1, Division 2, Division 3, we call them by their real life names like Premiership, Serie A, 1. Bundesliga, SuperLiga and so on. Let us know if there is anything wrong with the names added.

The team setup screen will receive a new tab. In the process, I am implementing a new screen look/feel and some ideas. An example is that now you can know what is your selected formation only by looking at the “current” mark on “My Formations” box. I have made this available a little sooner so you guys can get used to the new design. Also, I have updated our javascript framework. Mostly to inherit misc bugfixes.

We need volunteers to translate RS to the languages in the bottom of this post. It would be nice if we could get patient partners, as rubysoccer is BETA and will need continued work. Those languages were statistically chosen, considering the countries with more hits on rubysoccer.

I will get in touch with those who are willing to help with some instructions by email, soon.

I am still preparing our formations screen to receive the new “advanced” stuff. But, in the meanwhile, I have a few bonuses for you guys:

- Rotated the field: left/right player positions are now easily identified (this will be useful in a near future ;) )
- A little more speed to drag and drop.
- Reviewed the IE/Firefox alignment, mainly around the field area. Everybody should have a better experience now.

Team logos added to the team info screen. Their size is something around 25×25 to fit in our design, more than that would be too large. We hope everybody like this new addition, I’ve had a hard time finding, resizing and adding transparency to all logos. :-)

Please let us know if you see a logo that doesn’t correspond to the team.

Brazilian Portuguese translation is partially done. I’m still reviewing all screens and have already spotted some mispelled words and untranslated text. Hope to finish that until the beginning of next week.

Holiday mode implemented. Now you have the option Go on vacation on your team’s screen. There are only two things that will be automatically managed for you while you’re on vacation: contract renewals and youth hiring (if your team has not reached the player limit). Besides that, the inactivity period allowed before being fired will be greater for managers on vacation.

Inactive managers are now fired in 15 days (next week this period will be reduced to 7 days), unless they’re using the holiday mode (go on vacation option), in this case the inactive period allowed is 30 days.

We now have google adsense. Lets see if that will help us pay our server. We will study the best position for the ads, but for now they are on the bottom of the screen ( which I think it is the less painful place to start).

-max keeper rating is based on the number of goals conceived, 10.0 for 0 goals, 9.5 for 1 goal, 9.0 for 2 goals and so on
-low stamina values affect the keeper performance (he wasn’t affected until now)
-keepers loose 1 stamina per match instead of 3

Empowered managers with the new strategies tab (on formation screen). This feature adds A LOT of flexibility to your tactics, with conditioned (time-&-OR-result/event) dynamic changes. These include position and player substitutions. Please note that this is the initial design for that screen, a kick off for your evaluation and feedback. In other words, I am planning to add improvements and other formation stuff very soon.
It is never too much to repeat that your feedback is very important at this point.

Player sides are back to the UI, but won’t affect the player performance until next season on both dimensions. Players will receive penalty if they play in the wrong side. A player with side L can play ok in positions L and LC, but will receive penalties if playing on positions C, RC or R, being R the worst penalty. Same happens to R players, they play ok in R and RC positions only. For C players, they can play ok on positions LC, C and RC, but will receive a considerable penalty if playing on L or R positions. Be prepared!

p.s.: home team advantage is also ready to be launched, but we’ll wait until next season so those who have most of their home matches yet to be played won’t have an advantage in the current season

Team managers are displayed on match report screen. It’s important to notice the managers displayed are not necessarily the current managers, but those who managed the team at the time the match happened. All past matches will display “No Manager” as we had no logic to store the managers in the matches so far.

Implemented an initial screen for managers ranking. Will still add some info / improve that screen. Please note that this rank is not meaningful before the league starts (friendlies do not count for ranking). The icon is temporary.